Pinoy technopreneur makes global waves with AI chatbot

MANILA, Philippines — A Filipino technopreneur is making his mark in Silicon Valley with an artificial intelligence (AI) innovation that is attracting major investors and international attention.

Diogo Almeida, Filipino-Portuguese co-founder and CEO of San Francisco-based TypeSafe AI, developed Jev, an AI model designed to go beyond conventional chatbots by enabling software applications to make structured decisions using classifications, rankings, scores and probability estimates.

Unlike general-purpose AI models that primarily generate text, Jev is designed to provide machine-readable outputs that software systems can directly use to process information and make decisions.

The startup made headlines in October after Bloomberg reported that it raised approximately $870 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Sequoia Capital, at a reported valuation of $7.5 billion. This came just weeks after Jev’s launch.

While still a newcomer in a competitive market, Jev reflects the growing demand for specialized AI models that can do more than generate human-like responses.

Filipino roots, global ambitions

Almeida’s story is particularly meaningful for the Philippines. Although half-Portuguese, he grew up and studied in the country, attending Ateneo de Manila University High School. He also represented the Philippines at the International Mathematical Olympiad, where he won a bronze medal.

Before co-founding TypeSafe AI, Almeida worked in machine-learning research and was among the co-authors of the influential InstructGPT research paper, which helped advance the use of reinforcement learning from human feedback in training language models.

As AI becomes increasingly important to business competitiveness, innovations such as Jev also offer opportunities for Filipino developers and enterprises to explore new ways of building intelligent software.